Does state controller understate city worker pay?

The California controller'sgovernment compensation site, which details pay for almost every public employee in California, has been widely praised as a big step forward in government transparency.

But is the controller's compensation data misleading?

A public-employee-union watchdog group thinks so, and it has released a series of reports intended to highlight flaws in the controller's methodology that it says causes average wages for full-time employees in many municipalities tobe understated by as much as half.

The big flaw is this: The controller's site automatically calculates an average for each city based on the compensation reported for every employee, both full- and part-time. Since most cities have hundreds of people in temporary and part-time jobs such as lifeguard, animal shelter attendant and secretary, those numbers skew the average downward.

The CPPC did its own analysis of three Orange County cities' payroll data to quantify the cities' total spending for full-time employees' wages and benefits. In addition to removing the part-timers and temps from the mix, the CPPC then added in benefits, which further ups the ante.

Here's how the calculations for three Orange County cities stack up, using the different methodologies:

"Having these health insurance and disability insurance benefits are all good things, but they come at a cost," Ring said. "Let's just put real numbers out there so people can decide what we can afford and where to draw the line."

Jacob Roper, a spokesman for the controller's office, said last week that the data tool is imperfect, in part because of legal issues and the necessity of collecting uniform pay numbers from thousands of government entities throughout the state. But officials are constantly collecting comments and suggestions from the public to help improve the data tool, Roper said.

"It's very much a work in progress; we just try to provide as much data as we can," Roper said. "This is basically version 2.0. It looks better than it did a year ago, and it will look better a year from now."

In the meantime, the California Public Policy Center and the controller saythe public should be aware of a few things when using the controller's office data:

• "Average wages for all employees" is calculated by adding together regular, overtime, "lump sum" pay (includes cash payments for unused sick time and vacation) and "other" pay (includes pay for the time it takes to change into a uniform, extra pay for being bi-lingual, and bonuses) for all workers, whether they are full-time, part-time or temporary. That total pay figure is then divided by the number of workers, which produces the average for all employees. Employer-paid benefits including pensions, health-care programs, insurance costs and deferred compensation, are listed as benefits and are not included in wages.

• Some compensation, including "per diem" payments and allowances for cellphones and vehicles, may not be included in wages or benefits.

•All of the compensation data is submitted by local and state offices, and the controller's office does not perform audits to make sure the information is correct. But the controller's office can identify serious problems by comparing tax information with payroll, Roper said.

It's worth noting that the leaders of the California Public Policy Center have worked to limit the power of public employee unions. For instance, Proposition 32, a November 2012 ballot measure written by CPPC President Mark W. Bucher, a Tustin lawyer, would have limited the use of union dues for political purposes. The measure was defeated by voters. Bucher pushed a similar, unsuccessful measure in 1998 and another in 2010 that never got on the ballot.

Among the California Public Policy Center's main complaints with the controller's website is that it seems to focus on wages, while benefits are less obvious, and total compensation is not calculated anywhere.

Total compensation is a particularly important tool when comparing wages in different employment sectors, Ring said.

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